District 5 Diary

Monday, January 04, 2016

District 5 Diary's Year End Awards for 2015

Jihad Enabler of the Year: Ralph Stone

Stone wins this award for the PC flab-gab after the Charlie Hebdo massacre in his letter to the editor in the Chronicle:

I am not Charlie

Regarding “Massacre at French paper stuns world” (Jan. 8), the killing of 12 people at the French newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, is appalling. Hopefully, the perpetrators will soon be caught and prosecuted. The fact that 12 people are dead over cartoons by white, male cartoonists is horrible.

Free speech is an important part of our society and criticism of Charlie Hebdo cartoons is also speech. But no one should be killed over cartoons. However, the statement “Je Suis Charlie” (I Am Charlie) ignores the magazine’s history of xenophobia, racism, sexism and homophobia. I sympathize with the victims’ families, but I will not be Charlie.

"City progressives are further hamstrung by the ongoing deployment of Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi as a political cluster bomb. Mayor Ed Lee's cruel but ingenious political masterstroke continues to pay dividends. By forcing progressive politicians to vote on whether to boot Mirkarimi from office after the progressive stalwart grabbed his wife by the arm, Lee boxed them into an unwinnable situation: Either capitulate to contrived political pressure and alienate the people who voted them into office, or open themselves up to lavishly funded independent expenditure campaigns accusing them of coddling and enabling a wife-beater. Some $750,000 was poured into such an effort that sank progressive Supervisor David Campos in his Assembly bid versus the more pragmatic Supervisor David Chiu."

There's no evidence that Mayor Lee had that in mind when he tried to force Mirkarimi to resign. Nor is there any evidence that the Mirkarimi issue had a noticeable impact on the Campos/Chiu race.

Least Reassuring Statement of the Year: Governor BrownWhen asked where the state was going to get the money to build high-speed rail, Governor Brown answered: "Don't worry about it, we're going to get it."

The Chronicle published the cropped photo above in solidarity with the Charlie Hebdo victims! Mustn't offend any Muslim terrorists!

Shafer/Breed interview: 1:19 to 9:02

Worst Interview of the Year: Scott Shafer with Supervisor London BreedShafer didn't know enough about city issues, let alone District 5 issues, to do a good interview. As usual Breed was in blather mode. See also Shafer's softball interview with Leah Shahum in 2013.

McMillan and Cavagnaro didn't know enough about the Bicycle Coalition, the Bicycle Plan, the MTA, Polk Street or what's happening on city streets in general to do a good interview. In the spirit of equal time, I offered to be interviewed by the clueless duo but my offer got no response.

Over the years Saunders is the only journalist on either of the dailies---or weeklies and monthlies, for that matter---who has routinely gone against the grain on important city issues. In part that's because she's a conservative, but I'm a liberal and I often agree with her dissents.

Anti-Climax of the Year:The MTA Finally Released theBicycle Count ReportWhy the delay? Because the annual count of cyclists in Progressive Land was very disappointing to the MTA that sees running the city's transportation system as secondary to promoting cycling.

Worst New Slogan Disguised as a Safety Program:The MTA for Embracing Vision Zero

"The Vision Zero Initiative seeks to reduce traffic deaths to zero–--certainly a worthy goal. However, I looked throughout its web site and couldn’t find anything about how they propose to achieve that goal. Instead, there is a lot of mumbo jumbo along with a few poorly chosen statistics about how safe roads are in Sweden. The lack of specific recommendations combined with the misuse of data leads me to believe that this initiative is no better than a cult trying to get money out of gullible government officials with the promise that, if they pay enough, they’ll get a magic formula to safer streets..."

Best City Cop of the Year: Commander AliAli did what the MTA should be doing: a thorough analysis of every city traffic fatality in 2014. With its massive manpower, the MTA should be analyzing every injury accident on city streets to figure out what, if anything, can be done to prevent them.

Worst City Cop of the Year: Raymond ChuIn the video above, watch Chu pepper-spray and beat a homeless guy.

Worst Police Chief of the Year: SFPD's Greg SuhrA lot of competition in the US for this award, but Suhr gets it. See the chronology of Suhr's achievements in the SF Weekly.

Worst Bike Editorial of the Year: The SF Chronicle on Bike HelmetsWorst Bike Editorial, Runner-up:The LA Times on Bike Helmets

Well, I wept when they jailed Chelsea Manning,A hero for our time.And I cheered when Snowden ran to Russia,Stealing government secrets is fine.But Charlie Hebdo were bigots and racists,They should have known that punching down is a crime.So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal.

Dumbest Anti-Car Idea: Jason Henderson's Zero Parking ProposalTo deal with traffic congestion in San Francisco, Henderson proposes building more residential highrises in the city that provide no parking for new residents.

"After Brown became governor, he deputized his wife to research the high-speed-rail project and help him decide whether to support it. One of the people whose expertise she sought was Dan Richard, a former Brown aide who had also served on the board of the Bay Area’s bart[sic] transportation system. He was living in Washington, D.C., and recalls several phone calls with Gust Brown over many months — about the High Speed Rail Authority’s much-criticized plan to start construction in the sparsely populated Central Valley rather than in a big northern or southern city, and the projected cost and ridership of the trains. “It was very clear that she was the one getting into the policy issues,” Richard says...

"In the process of addressing the media before Game 1, Commissioner Adam Silver proclaimed the Warriors “need a new arena. There is no doubt about that.” You figure he can’t say much else, hanging out with co-owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber as they chart the path to San Francisco, but the Warriors’ East Bay fan base begs to differ. Fenway Park is a structure from some other time, but its treasures are preserved. Wrigley Field didn’t get torn down, just renovated. Oracle doesn’t have that brand of charm or tradition, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with it, especially now as it thrives in the Finals spotlight..."

Best Political Leadership of the Year by a California Democrat: Gavin Newsom

Best Memorial to Progressive Political Failure: The Silly Bunny StatueThe cutesy statue will apparently be installed this year on the old UC Extension property on lower Haight Street. That's a suitable location, since city progressives helped UC hijack that property, zoned for "public use" for 150 years, for a housing development to fatten that predatory institutions bottom line. UC had title to the property for more than 50 years due to its "education mission." Turns out that expanding its real estate portfolio is more important to UC than education, since that huge housing complex is a lot more profitable than providing university courses for working people.

Prog Nostalgia Story of the Year: On Matt GonzalezOn the front page of the SF Chronicle! No real reason for the story except to revisit those heroic days of yore when city progressives almost won the mayor's office.

The Attempt to Rewrite City History on the Bicycle Plan ContinuedOn Planetizen, a so-called smart growth website. See also this.

Worst Two Stories of the Year on Masonic Avenue:Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez in the SF ExaminerFitzgerald's stories read like joint press releases by the MTA and the Bicycle Coalition, the only sources cited in the stories: see this and this.

The Phoniest Scandal Expose of the Year: The SF ExaminerReporters for the Examiner assumed that what Raymond Chow's defense lawyers said in court had any basis in fact. It didn't. Chow's lawyers were just deploying bullshit that might help them later when the case went to trial.

This Year's Nikita Award Winner: Donald TrumpThe Nikita was invented by Herb Caen to acknowledge ostensibly English language that reads like it was translated from the Ukrainian. Trump wins it this year for this word salad. Previous winners: Ross Mirkarimi and Sarah Palin

Pangloss of the Year: SPUR's Gabriel MetcalfMetcalf wins for his op-ed in the Chronicle, where he made statements like this about the housing crisis: "Waves of new arrivals have made the Bay Area the wonderful place that it is, and it's going to be OK." We have a right to suspect that Metcalf is in no danger of being evicted.